1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to an electric heat therapy apparatus which can prevent the human skin from direct light from the light source and can efficiently retain the heat in the heat reservoir.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Following the rapid change in society structures and booming in the business industry, people living in the current era has to fight with time. Being overstressed and lack of exercises become normal symptoms, thus people are usually suffering from muscle pains. To alleviate or combat muscle pain, different treatments have emerged, such as message, electrotherapy, heat treatment . . . etc. Taking heat treatment as an example, muscle pains are alleviated or cured by placing heat source device on human skin to allow the penetration of the heat into subcutaneous tissues; moreover, the heat treatment can even stimulate the human metabolism to further enhance the human health.
Generally, hot towels, hot packs, filled with chemical compositions, electric heat therapy devices, burners or the like are used for providing heat treatment. The electric heat therapy device is the most commonly used tool for heat treatment, because it can be conveniently used at home in irrespective of time and place and can be carried easily. The heat source for such an electric heat therapy device basically falls into two categories, i.e. the heating filament and the light bulb. As for the electric heat therapy device utilizing a light bulb as the heat source disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,505,545 and 4,658,823 (see FIGS. 1 and 2), the electric heat therapy device 1 mainly includes a cylindrical body 11, 11a, a light bulb 12, 12a, and a power unit 13, 13a (only the electric heat therapy device 1 shown in FIG. 1 will be disclosed in the following).
The cylindrical body 11 has a closed end 111 and an open end 112. The power unit 13 is mounted on the inner side of the closed end 111 of the cylindrical body 11. The light bulb 12 is arranged against the open end 112 of the cylindrical body 11. When the power unit 13 supplies electricity to the light bulb 12, the light bulb 12 will give light to produce heat energy. Then, the open end 112 of the cylindrical body 11 is put onto the human body so that the human body will receive the light and heat given by the light bulb 12 simultaneously for heat treatment. Although the electric heat therapy device can achieve the heat treatment purpose, it still suffers from a lot of drawbacks. For instance, according to the latest medical report, direct light from the light bulb will cause pathological changes in the human skin. Hence, the electric heat therapy device connot bring good health to the user, but on the contrary, it will cause pathological changes in the human skin subject to direct light given by the light bulb. Furthermore, the electric heat therapy device suffers from a more serious drawback of losing most heat energy from the open end 112 of the cylindrical member 11 which has no means to reserve the heat energy, so that the electric heat therapy device will not be hot enough to provide workable heat treatment to the user.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improvement in the structure of am electric heat therapy apparatus which can obviate and mitigate the above-mentioned drawbacks.